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The Star Fox series has its own particular catchphrase, of course, but there's another line that's lingered with me a little longer. You'll know it, I'm sure; the crudely digitised bass bark of General Pepper as you shoot out into Corneria for the first time, full of hope, excitement and, if you're an 11-year-old just back from a Rumbelows in Chesham with a box-fresh SNES hastily plugged into your CRT, pure wide-eyed wonder at this dazzling new world of wireframes and polygons. 'Good luck!'Star Fox Zero, Platinum's Wii U entry into Nintendo's series, may have lost some of the wide-eyed wonder of the new, but it leans so heavily on older entries that it's hard not to be whisked back to that more innocent time. You'll hear an all-new fully voiced take on General Pepper before each mission, barking out from the GamePad, and at the very outset that scratchy old sample is played out to brilliant effect (quite naturally you're also told to do a barrel roll early on in Star Fox Zero's tutorial mission).
This is an achingly familiar retread of what's gone before, then, but that's not to say it isn't peppered with its own sense of invention. Star Fox Zero's announcement came at a time when Nintendo placed fresh emphasis on the Wii U's GamePad, first with an early concept of this particular game as well as a series of Miyamoto's own experimental sketches (one of which finds its way to the Wii U alongside Star Fox Zero as an additional bonus or a standalone download).
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